What is your short testimony?
I have always been a spiritual person. Growing up Catholic, I took my religion seriously. As a little boy, I was active as an altar boy and even considered becoming a priest. When I was a teenager, my family left the Catholic Church and joined the Worldwide Church of God. It was a very legalistic, works-based religion centered on keeping the Old Testament commands, like the Saturday Sabbath, the annual holy days, the dietary laws, and a system of three tithes (read cult).
In college, I went through a process of proving my faith in Jesus, accepted him as my Savior, and was baptized. I believed that Jesus died for my sins and that it was through grace I was saved, but I still needed to do my part, work hard, and keep all the laws. This is how I lived until I was about 45. My religion was hard, even sacrificial at times. I tried and failed to keep the system of three tithes our church taught. I tried to keep the Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, but that was tough as my retail career grew. I tried to exercise faith and not rely on doctors, but that was especially hard when our son Ryan nearly died after his appendix burst. He developed massive peritonitis and was in a coma for nine days.
Ryan's illness and the reality that he was close to death had a profound effect on me and accelerated the process of my religion becoming a more personal faith. It was during that crisis that, in a much more profound way, I surrendered my son and my life to Jesus. I did not bargain with God. Instead, in a way I had never experienced before, I surrendered to him and accepted whatever his will might be for Ryan and for my life. I was learning to trust God with what I could not control.
A few years later, a remarkable transformation took place within the Worldwide Church of God. The church came to recognize that Christ had fulfilled the Old Testament requirements we had believed were necessary to be made right with God. His life, his death, his resurrection, his grace, and a personal relationship with him took center stage. These changes swept through the church and were dramatic, even painful, for many. But God graciously gave Cori and me eyes to see, and we embraced them with passion.
My faith journey has taken some interesting and dramatic twists and turns. Even when my theology was all screwed up, Jesus was faithful. God, through his Holy Spirit, has called me into a relationship with him. I have grown to realize that I cannot rely on my own efforts or my own righteousness, and that nothing I do can meet the standards God has set. The more I grow in my relationship with Jesus, the more I realize how sinful and desperately wicked my heart really is, and how much I need his grace. But I have a Savior, and I rest in faith that Jesus paid it all. My obedience does not earn his love or acceptance; it is a response to the love and grace he has already given me. Through faith in Christ, I am a child of God. Praise the God who saves.

What is your hope for Eternal Church?
My hope for Eternal is that Jesus would be at the absolute center of everything we do and that all we are and do would point to him. That we would be passionate about reaching those who do not know Jesus and helping one another grow in our relationship with him. That we would continually be formed and transformed by Christ through his Word and the work of the Holy Spirit. I hope that Eternal would be a place of healing, where we are transparent and authentic, where people are known, loved, and cared for, and where God's grace is not only proclaimed but lived out in the way we love one another.